Why is it hard to get scientific evidence of the paranormal?? . . . some of my thoughts . . .

IMO paranormal events are unpredictable and not reproducible so usually defy any research attempt requiring such traits . . . however, this doesn't preclude research based on data collection and descriptive categorization as is common in cultural anthropology and primatology . . . one needs to first collect descriptive testimony and correlate it possibly with environmental data as in chronobiology ( [link to en.m.wikipedia.org] for example the Federal Reserve found a stastically valid correlation between solar storm activity and transaction activity on the securities market . . .

We now have massive data collection and analysis capabilities never before realized . . . we need to be more imaginative in how to capture and describe the events and look for commonalities, trends, and correlations of location, date, environment, relationships, genetics and so forth . . .

In other words . . . standard research approaches are not likely to be successful until more is understood on how the interaction of membranes and multi-universes work but descriptive collection and categorization of paranormal events and data analysis may lead to surprising relationships . . .

It is also possible that the people that are really good at paranormal esoterics don't care to be studied or examined, not only that but they don't even come close to being seen and few know about them. Just an opinion.

It is also possible that the people that are really good at paranormal esoterics don't care to be studied or examined, not only that but they don't even come close to being seen and few know about them. Just an opinion.

Quoting: WindyMind

I think that is a very astute observation . . .

Martin Luther King . . . Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter!

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.Galileo Galilei, Italian astronomer & physicist (1564 - 1642)

The only thing guaranteed in life is deception. . . everything else is optional, except for death and taxes . . . George B

There are associations between our word and the paranormal but we can't see them in our three dimensional world or we don't have the tools to see associations in a multi-dimensional world . . .

The associations may be there . . . we may be limited by our three dimensional thinking . . . and by not using the tools available to the fullest extent . . . many things have been hidden under our noses in plain sight like genetic associations . . . it took a Monk working with peas a few years to see the interconnections of plant genetics . . .

Martin Luther King . . . Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter!

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.Galileo Galilei, Italian astronomer & physicist (1564 - 1642)

The only thing guaranteed in life is deception. . . everything else is optional, except for death and taxes . . . George B

I have a friend who is a monk and he has finished the highest degree his monastery gives and he is teaching but after years of intense study he had a little boredom and now he is studying science and very excited about it.

I think it is a great combination for him and here is a person that lived and breathed studies that were no doubt esoteric at times excited about science.

People like him I think can make a difference in science.....after having studied the science of the mind.

I have a friend who is a monk and he has finished the highest degree his monastery gives and he is teaching but after years of intense study he had a little boredom and now he is studying science and very excited about it.

I think it is a great combination for him and here is a person that lived and breathed studies that were no doubt esoteric at times excited about science.

People like him I think can make a difference in science.....after having studied the science of the mind.

Quoting: WindyMind

Interesting . . . He may just do that . . .

Martin Luther King . . . Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter!

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.Galileo Galilei, Italian astronomer & physicist (1564 - 1642)

The only thing guaranteed in life is deception. . . everything else is optional, except for death and taxes . . . George B

Seems we deal with the unknown by speculation, theorizing, formulation, and investigation . . . expected behaviors by rational people . . . these speculations become strained and sometimes extremely bizarre in concept and implication when we deal with the paranormal . . . when compared to other areas of investigation . . .

They are in my opinion mystical in tone and scope . . .

Content from external source:

[link to www.integralscience.org] This testimony of modern physics has striking resemblance to the testimony of the mystics. Consider, for example, the words of the Buddha:I teach the non-existence of things because they carry no signs of inherent self-nature. It is true that in one sense they are seen and discriminated by the senses as individualized objects; but in another sense, because of the absence of any characteristic marks of self-nature, they are not seen but are only imagined. In one sense they are graspable, but in another sense, they are not graspable.11Remarkably, both physics and mysticism teach us that the appearance of an objectively existing world independent of observation is an illusion. Moreover, they both say that even the observed world does not exist objectively with anything like the definiteness that we imagine. And this illusion of definite objective existence, they tell us, arises from our ignorance of the true nature of phenomena. Far from being incompatible with the testimony of the mystics, therefore, modern science seems to make many of the same claims as the great mystical traditions about the nature of phenomena.

Martin Luther King . . . Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter!

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.Galileo Galilei, Italian astronomer & physicist (1564 - 1642)

The only thing guaranteed in life is deception. . . everything else is optional, except for death and taxes . . . George B

1) If there is confusion between alleged paranormal events and actual observable events . . . how does this occur with such frequency??

2) Why do people form their conclusions about their observations in ways unacceptable to science?

3) Why is there so much fear and confusion associated with such observations ?

4) If the observations are mental tricks or fantasy what is the reason for their existence?

5) What is the proper way to investigate the existence of such phenomena?

I studied primitive religions (religion in general) and ethnology (cultural anthropology), sociology, industrial psychology along with classical scientific methods (hard science) . . . I have never resolved the above questions . . . primarily because of the lack of predictability and reproducibility of the observable evidence . . . conclusion . . . the events are fantasy (if so why?) or they are by their nature totally random . . .

Martin Luther King . . . Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter!

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.Galileo Galilei, Italian astronomer & physicist (1564 - 1642)

The only thing guaranteed in life is deception. . . everything else is optional, except for death and taxes . . . George B

The Human Relations Area Files, Inc. (HRAF), located in New Haven, Connecticut is a nonprofit international membership organization with over 300 member institutions in the U.S. and more than 20 other countries. A financially autonomous research agency based at Yale University since 1949, its mission is to encourage and facilitate worldwide comparative studies of human culture, society, and behavior in the past and present. It mainly pursues this mission by producing and distributing two full-text databases on the Web, eHRAF World Cultures (formerly "eHRAF Collection of Ethnography") and eHRAF Archaeology (formerly eHRAF Collection of Archaeology"). HRAF also sponsors and edits the quarterly journal, Cross-Cultural Research: The Journal of Comparative Social Science, and organizes and edits encyclopedias.

Brain scans show people with spiritual practices show brain changes . . .

Content from external source:

Now again, that's not true across the board, but that's one of the things that we tend to find is the distinction that when people are religious or spiritual, they engage many different parts of their brain, more so than what other people will engage when they're just doing other kinds of practices or having other kinds of experiences.

So we do see - and I think the other thing that we've studied is we actually have studied some people who are atheists, and we do see differences in the brains of an atheist than we do an individual who is religious.

In fact, one of our cute little studies that we did was we had a few atheists come in and actually had them try to contemplate God and asked them to focus on God. And we got a very different kind of response in their brain, obviously, than a religious person. [link to m.npr.org]

Martin Luther King . . . Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter!

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.Galileo Galilei, Italian astronomer & physicist (1564 - 1642)

The only thing guaranteed in life is deception. . . everything else is optional, except for death and taxes . . . George B

I may have said this before but I went into a bookstore to listen to some new age lecture and while on my way in a book fell off off a shelf and it was the book that the lecturer had written, it was for sale on the shelf. It was odd that just one book should fall for no reason and I could have gone the route of thinking oh this is something, I should really be interested in this, but I didn't feel like that at all. It was strange. It was more of an oh ok, this is interesting moment.

I've mentioned this before, methinks, but I had dream where Brandon Lee told me who killed him. And this when I was young and had NO idea about the Illuminati business.

Actually the first was years ago, I had another the last winter. It heard part of a name as it felt a I had an Incubus on my chest. As soon as I shook myself awake, I googled the name and it was someone on the movie's crew.

I may have said this before but I went into a bookstore to listen to some new age lecture and while on my way in a book fell off off a shelf and it was the book that the lecturer had written, it was for sale on the shelf. It was odd that just one book should fall for no reason and I could have gone the route of thinking oh this is something, I should really be interested in this, but I didn't feel like that at all. It was strange. It was more of an oh ok, this is interesting moment.

joke....was that rigged to get me to buy the book?

Quoting: WindyMind

It is always good to be skeptical . . .

Martin Luther King . . . Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter!

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.Galileo Galilei, Italian astronomer & physicist (1564 - 1642)

The only thing guaranteed in life is deception. . . everything else is optional, except for death and taxes . . . George B

I've mentioned this before, methinks, but I had dream where Brandon Lee told me who killed him. And this when I was young and had NO idea about the Illuminati business.

Actually the first was years ago, I had another the last winter. It heard part of a name as it felt a I had an Incubus on my chest. As soon as I shook myself awake, I googled the name and it was someone on the movie's crew.

Interesting that 9 out of 10 Americans believe in a spiritual world . . .

Further evidence . . .

Content from external source:

June 3, 2011More Than 9 in 10 Americans Continue to Believe in GodProfessed belief is lower among younger Americans, Easterners, and liberalsby Frank NewportPRINCETON, NJ -- More than 9 in 10 Americans still say "yes" when asked the basic question "Do you believe in God?"; this is down only slightly from the 1940s, when Gallup first asked this question. [link to www.gallup.com]

Martin Luther King . . . Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter!

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.Galileo Galilei, Italian astronomer & physicist (1564 - 1642)

The only thing guaranteed in life is deception. . . everything else is optional, except for death and taxes . . . George B

This seems to have some credibility based on the researcher's credentials . . . a scientist that believes in ghosts . . .

Content from external source:

David Fontana

Professor David G. J. Fontana Ph.D. FBPS (1934 – 18 October 2010) was a British academic, psychologist and author. He was Professor of Psychology at the Cardiff University. He was also visiting professor at John Moores University and the University of the Algarve.[1]

Biography

Born in Middlesex, Fontana was a Fellow of the British Psychological Society, a Chartered Psychologist and a Chartered Counselling Psychologist. He published more than 45 books, including popular treatments of dreams and symbols. Fontana took an interest in paranormal research such as mediumship, poltergeist cases and Electronic voice phenomena[2] and was at one time president of the Society for Psychical Research, from 1995 to 1998.[3] [link to en.m.wikipedia.org]

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Over the following two years, the poltergeist was exhaustively investigated by Professor David Fontana, a Fellow of the British Psychological Society. He became convinced that the so-called ‘Cardiff Poltergeist Case’ was a genuine haunting. [link to www.newsmonster.co.uk]

Martin Luther King . . . Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter!

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.Galileo Galilei, Italian astronomer & physicist (1564 - 1642)

The only thing guaranteed in life is deception. . . everything else is optional, except for death and taxes . . . George B